The whales won't hurt you on purpose. I've had two come to check me out. They are a curious sort. Now the great white's are a little different story. But on that note there are worse things to worry about like the weather in the Ocean.

So far, I haven't had any close encounters of the large kind. This is probably do to the fact that I only bought my boat in April. However, over my lifetime, I've had many close encounters with large marine animals while snorkeling and surfing. They are always very enjoyable and I have never had a bad experience. However, I do understand that they are bigger than me and I'm visiting their environment. Even playing with me, they have the ability to accidentally hurt or kill me. Always respect the marine environment and all of it's inhabitants.

For some reason that I don't understand marine life is somehow attracted to my wife. On several occasions she has had dolphins come right up to her wanting to be petted and played with (these are wild dolphins in the ocean). She has had Manatee's come right up to her kayak a few times now, a couple times they almost tipped her over. She also had an encounter with a large shark (I would guess around ten feet) wanting to hang out under her kayak to get shade in 3-4 ft of water down near Key West, only he was at least as big as her Revolution. She couldn't get rid of him, obviously I took my time getting there to help her (she was screaming), it took me about 5 minutes to traverse the hundred feet or so (from my safe distance), by the time I got there he had skeetered off, he was probably tired of being slapped in the back by her mirage fins. My safe distance is now 200 ft. (true story)So needless to say whenever we are out kayaking together I try to keep my distance from her in fear of being eaten. If we ever encounter a whale my safe distance will increase to a few miles.Bob

Bob,I almost hate to mention this but has the idea of a substantial life insurance policy on your wife ever occurred to you? Don't take this to any extremes but based on what you've stated you just never know.

I've had a few whale encounters a lot like this and yes, they are frightening. I've also had close encounters with sharks, including a great white. I can tell you fur sure that having a fully grown whale a couple of feet away from the kayak is much scarier than having a GW shark similarly close.

Here's a photo of the closest call I had with a whale on a kayak:

In this shot you can see my rod holder in the foreground, just to demonstrate how close it was:

And this is a great white:

In this vid you can see footage of both the shark and the whale encounters (both at the start). You have to look close to see the whale fin pop up next to my kayak, but if you catch it, you'll see how close it was.